Asia-Pacific ACL Asia-Pacific Chapter of the ACL

AACL Poster

News

In Memory of Professor Pushpak Bhattacharyya
06 Nov 2025

The AACL Executive Committee mourns the passing of Professor Pushpak Bhattacharyya, our esteemed former Executive Committee member and 2016 ACL President, who left us on October 5th, 2025.

As ACL President and AACL Executive Committee member, Pushpak provided visionary leadership that expanded our global reach while maintaining the scientific rigor of our community. His pioneering research at IIT Bombay laid foundations for computational linguistics (CL) and natural language processing (NLP) in India and across Asia, particularly in machine translation and computational semantics for resource-scarce languages.

Beyond his scholarly achievements, Pushpak will be remembered as a distinguished mentor. His legacy lives on through the countless researchers he inspired and CL/NLP community he served and contributed to. His passing is a huge loss for the CL/NLP community!

We extend our deepest condolences to his family, colleagues at IIT Bombay, and all who were touched by his wisdom and generosity. His contributions to our field and organization will endure.

AACL Executive Committee

Call for Bids: AACL-IJCNLP 2026
28 May 2025

The 5th Conference of the Asia-Pacific Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics and the 15th International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing

The Asia-Pacific Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (AACL) hereby invites proposals to host the conference in the Asia-Pacific region in November or December of 2026. At this time, we seek preliminary draft proposals from prospective bidders in the Asia-Pacific region. Promising bidders will be asked to provide additional information for the final selection.

The AACL-IJCNLP 2026 Coordinating Committee, made up of representatives of the AACL and representatives from the AFNLP, will select the General Chair and the Program Committee Co-Chairs for the conference. Draft proposals should identify a Local Arrangements Chair, who will work with the General Chair and the Coordinating Committee to develop a detailed plan and budget.

To facilitate conference organization, bidders may delegate many tasks of their choice to a Professional Conference Organizer and/or to the ACL Office. Handy bid guidelines, including expense and task list templates and additional useful links are provided at: https://www.aclweb.org/adminwiki/index.php/Bid_Guidelines

The template for local expenses is available here: http://ftp.cs.toronto.edu/pub/gh/ACL-conference-bid-template-CURRENT.xlsx (If it doesn’t download automatically, please right-click and choose “Save Link As…”)

Bid Highlights: Draft proposals include information on the following:

  • Estimates of the anticipated number of registrants
  • Location (accessibility; conference venue, e.g., convention center, hotel or university; accommodation; dining options; capability to host the registrants predicted)
  • Travel alternatives and international access
  • Proposed dates. Religious and local national holidays should be avoided, as much as possible.
  • Local arrangements team (chair/co-chair, committee, volunteer labor, registration handling; description of any experience the team has had in organizing previous conferences and the number of participants at those conferences)
  • Local Computational Linguistics community (the size and impact of local R&D groups on NLP and related disciplines)
  • Meeting venues (space for sessions, tutorials, workshops, posters, exhibits, demos, small meetings and registration)
  • Printing of conference booklet
  • Computing/wifi/audiovisual: whether there will be desktop/laptop in conference
  • Social events and Catering, including breaks, receptions, poster sessions, banquet and entertainment (traditionally, dancing for participants at the banquet)
  • Local sponsorships
  • Opportunities for co-location with other meetings
  • Local expenses estimates spreadsheet (using template provided, link above)

Evaluation: Proposals will be evaluated according to the following criteria (unordered):

  • Experience, flexibility, and openmindedness of local arrangements team
  • Local Computational Linguistics community support
  • Local government and industry support
  • Accessibility and attractiveness of proposed site
  • Suitability of proposed dates
  • Adequacy of conference and exhibit facilities for the anticipated number of registrants (space for 600 attendees, 3 rooms of 100–150, 5 rooms for workshops/tutorials)
  • Adequacy of residence accommodations and food services in a range of price categories and close to the conference facilities
  • Adequacy of expense projections (estimated registration fees/structures and surplus expectations)
  • Geographical balance with regard to ACL, AACL, IJCNLP, EMNLP and COLING meetings in the Asia-Pacific region in the decade prior to 2025 (2011 Chiang Mai, Thailand; 2012 Jeju, Korea and Mumbai, India; 2013 Nagoya, Japan; 2014 Doha, Qatar; 2015 Beijing, China; 2016 Osaka, Japan; 2017 Taipei, ROC; 2018 Melbourne, Australia; 2019 Hong Kong, China; 2020 Suzhou, China; 2021 Bangkok, Thailand; 2022 Gyeongju, Korea; 2023 Singapore and Bali, Indonesia; 2024 Bangkok, Thailand; 2025 Suzhou, China and Bombay, India)

Important Dates:

  • July, 2025: Call for bids
  • August 15, 2025: Notify intention to submit proposal
  • August 25, 2025: Draft proposals due
  • Through September 19, 2025: Feedback to bidders
  • October 3, 2025: Final bids due
  • October 27, 2025: Bid selected

The selected location for AACL-IJCNLP 2026 will be announced at EMNLP 2025 (November 5-9, Suzhou, China https://2025.emnlp.org/). For any queries, please contact Xuanjing Huang, the Coordinating Committee Chair. Please send notifications and draft proposals to:

Xuanjing Huang
Fudan University
xjhuang@fudan.edu.cn

Once we receive the proposal we will acknowledge.

Results of the AACL Board Elections 2025-2026
08 Mar 2025

The new AACL Executive Board for the 2025-2026 term has been successfully elected by AACL members. The elected members are as follows:

  • Chair: Xuanjing Huang
  • Chair-elect: Maggie, Wenjie Li
  • Secretary: Thepchai Supnithi
  • Treasurer: Mark Dras
  • At Large: Daisuke Kawahara, Lun-Wei Ku, Taro Watanabe

IJCNLP - AACL 2025 Announced: Dates & Venue Confirmed
02 Feb 2025

The organizers of IJCNLP - AACL 2025 are delighted to announce the dates and venue of the conference:

Date: 20th - 24th December 2025

Venue: Victor Menezes Convention Centre (VMCC), IIT Bombay, Mumbai, India

Map Location: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Cd9JPMaiWr7TDjy46

Source: Announcement on the ACL website

Results of the AACL Board Elections 2023-2024
20 Feb 2023

The results of the AACL Board elections for the 2023-2024 term are as follows:

  • Xuanjing Huang(Chair-elect)
  • Wanxiang Che (Secretary)
  • Mark Dras (Treasurer)
  • Akiko Aizawa
  • Thepchai Supnithi
  • Pushpak Bhattacharyya

Thanks to Keh-Yih Su, who has finished the service on the AACL executive board and for his leadership in the past 2 years. We’d like to thank the nominating committee, Yang Liu (chair), Haifeng Wang and Yusuke Miyao for their nomination. Thanks also to the AACL members for participating in the voting process.

The details of AACL Board for the 2023-2024 term (starting Jan 1, 2023) can be found here.